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holic beverage into the Indian country, and sought to secure 
just treatment for the Indians. 
Three years later Congress passed an act which definitely 
allowed British subjects a share in the fur trade along the 
northern boundary. Indians could import goods duty free, 
and no restrictions were to be placed upon their trade in 
furs.^^ This measure aroused objections from the American 
traders and controversies with the Canadians.^^ It was not, 
however, until 1816 that the Indian trade was forbidden to 
all except citizens of the United States.^® 
The development of government interest in the fur trade 
was due probably to the organization of the business on a 
grand scale and to the entry of this business into politics. As 
early as 1808 the first great American fur company was or- 
ganized at St. Louis. It was known as the Missouri River 
Fur Company, and its main trade was to be up that river. 
Its leading spirits were the Spaniard, Manuel Lisa, and the 
two Frenchmen, Auguste and Pierre Chouteau. It included 
in its membership, however, several men from the eastern 
United States.^® 
The greatest of all the fur-trading organizations was the 
American Fur Company, organized by John Jacob Astor, the 
great fur merchant of New York. He had long dominated the 
fur trade of the country east of the Alleghenies and had 
sought, unsuccessfully, to get a part of the trade of the Mis- 
sissippi Valley.^^ His first great western adventure was on 
the Pacific coast where British force and cunning forced him 
out. With the establishment of peace thruout the world in 
1815 the price of furs began to advance rapidly. Astor 
bought out his St. Louis rivals one by one and, with the ex- 
Act of March 2, 1799, The Public Statutes at Large of the United States of 
America, 701. 
** “By this line of division [Treaty of 1783] the posts of Michilimakinac, Detroit, 
and Niagara were surrendered to the United States. Yet it was not in their power to 
deprive Great Britain of the Indian or fur trade, carried on to the countries to the 
southward of the lakes . . .” Nathaniel Atcheson, Amencan Encroachments on 
British Rights or Observations on the Importance of the British North Americam Colonies 
and on the Late Treaties with the United States (London, 1808), ix. 
Act of March 29, 1816. The Public Statutes at Large of the United States of 
America, III, 332. 
The articles of agreement of the Missouri River Fur Company are in the Pierre 
Chouteau Collections' in the Missouri Historical Library. The best history of this com- 
pany is in Hiram M. Chittenden, History of the American Fur Trade in the Far West 
(3 vols., New York, 1902), I, 127-157. 
Letter of Astor to Auguste Chouteau, January 28, 1800, in Pierre Chouteau 
Collections. Printed in part in John Work Journal (Lewis and Phillips, editors), Cleve- 
land, 1923), 30, note 51. 
